Mud Love

Collections are very personal things.  Some people collect items that have a utilitarian purpose such as dishes, shoes or guitars.  Other people collect things whose primary function is to evoke nostalgia:  antiques, old photographs, items purchased on trips, etc.  Some people collect art or all of the recordings of Leslie Cheung (which for the serious completist includes every single, compilation and bootleg in addition to all of the LPs, cassettes and DVDs released under Leslie's name).  But I'm not one of those people.  While I freely acknowledge I suffer from bibliophilia, it is for what is written in those books and not for the books as objects in and of themselves.  So imagine my surprise when earlier this spring I looked at an accumulation of a certain item and realized that, like it or not, I had become a collector.  So you are now scratching your head wondering, what do I collect?Yixing teapotsYixing teapots are made from a unique type of clay that is found only in the region near the town of Yixing in east central China.  Beginning in the Ming Dynasty, local potters began to craft teaware out of this special clay.  The color of the pot reflects the variations in the color of the local clay, which can range from pale yellow to reddish-brown, chocolate brown to almost black or purple.  These are unglazed wares that are made using a rather unusual technique.  They can neither be thrown on a wheel nor constructed out of coils.  Rather, the clay is worked and then rolled out into thin sheets and the pieces of the pot are cut out and assembled free-hand to form the pots.  It is a true artisanal craft.  Since the end of the Cultural Revolution, teaware manufacture has been revived in the region and the production of teapots has exploded.  In addition to traditional shapes, a great deal of effort has gone into creating unique pots, either in terms of their decoration or shape.  You can spend hundreds of dollars on a single pot, or just a few.  Although I might hesitate to use a teapot costing five or six hundred dollars (they can be fragile and, like jade, should never be dropped or you should expect the worst), yixing teaware is famous for properties the clay gives to oolong and pu-erh teas.  The clay is fired unglazed, and it is a porous clay that gradually absorbs the tea brewed in it.  The story is, if you brew tea in an yixing teapot for many years, eventually you can brew a cup of tea without adding the tea leavesI received my first yixing tea pot 10 years ago from a friend who visited Beijing.  She knew I loved tea and so picked up a lovely little modern chocolate brown tea pot with a stirrup handle.  That teapot, sadly, got dropped in the sink a few years later and the whole bottom sheared off, but it was a hint of things to come.In the meantime I got very interested in tea, especially Chinese tea.  I bought a book and read up on the history of tea and the various famous and ordinary teas of China.  I am very lucky that the local gourmet market stocks a wide variety of quality loose tea.  I also found on-line sources for high quality teas.  So I began trying many different types of tea.  My tea book talked about yixing teapots and the Chinese gongfu tea ceremony,  One day passing through the tea section of the local gourmet store, I threw a glance at the sale rack and saw this cute little beauty on sale for half price.  And so a hopeless love affair with yixing unglazed teaware began.Gradually, over the past few years, I have added to my teaware collection.  Here is the pot I use several times a day to brew pu-erh tea.  Pu-erh has a strong, earthy flavor and so it is best to dedicate one teapot alone to brewing pu-erh.This pot is decorated with ginkgo leaves and ginkgo nuts.Here is another fun teapot that I use most for brewing oolong teas.  I love the decoration that makes it look like the teapot is wearing a Chinese jacket decorated with auspicious symbols.I bought two teapots in Hong Kong, a rather sober and serious-looking simple geometric pot that I bought specifically for gongfu-style brewing and a totally whimsical pot that I found at the Jade Market.When I started brewing in the gongfu style after I got back home, I realized that the teapot I bought in Hong Kong was actually too big if I was brewing for two, so I bought this miniscule little beauty that I dubbed "The Black Pearl".Two items of teaware share a common theme:  plum blossoms.  Both were gifts, so I guess people feel that the plum blossom decoration suits me.If you come to visit me at home, be prepared to be offered a cup of fine Chinese tea brewed in one of my lovely yixing teapots.